Seeking Answers

Samantha gently rubbed the bags beneath her eyes as she made her way down to Astor Place, seeking the K-Mart that housed the Uncanny Valley. It had been a week since she got out of the hospital and though the burns from Promethean fire had healed, she felt the weight of her every action weighing upon her. She just wanted to sleep, but there was still much to do: Answers to seek, names to take, and asses to kick. Meredith provided some names at her and Eileen’s housewarming party. She owed Willard an ass-kicking for his suggestion of grafting her deceased little brother’s grey-matter to his. All of that would come later though. Right now, she was here for answers.
 
Following Darren’s explicit and somewhat complicated instructions, Samantha stepped out of the K-mart and into the Uncanny Valley. The vast aisle of stalls peppered with fantastical vendors was a bit much at first for Samantha.
 
But she remembered what Darren said, “Don’t listen to them. Don’t even look at them. Just head midway down the aisle and you’ll see Jem. Talk only to Jem.”
 
So that’s what Samantha did.
 
The proprietor’s stall was exactly where Darren said it would be, and with him was a tall man, pale yet dark and handsome. Impossibly beautiful chimeric eyes caught Sam’s attention, briefly enthralling her. Jem noticed her approach, luckily, and finished her sentence to the man before turning his attention to Samantha.
 
“Hey! Samantha, right? Is this an emergency, because…” and he gestured to her guest.
 
“Yes, well no. It is for me.” Sam found her eyes drawn briefly to the stalls, but quickly back to the intense customer. “I was told I could come to you to trade in answers.”
 
“I see. Sorry Jameson, duty calls! But don’t go anywhere, I’d love to finish our conversation.” With all four eyes, She stared right through Samantha. “Continue, dear.” Samantha nervously fumbled with a pouch that held the insidious spyglass, her words stalling. It was one thing to see Jem alone among familiar faces, but another among the stalls of the Goblin Market.
 
Jameson’s eyes flash for a fleeting moment; the green warring with the brown. Before Samantha could speak, the dark man interjected. “Actually, I think I’ll stay. I like this angry girl. Her soul is burned.” He opened his mouth for a moment, reminiscent of a snake scenting the air. “Oh, she let her brother die, and it looks like she might be failing her other. Wow, we have quite the sinner here… Let her brother die, let a guard die. What are you here for little one?”
 
A cold anger settled in the back of Samantha’s chest. She shot a barbed glare at the man, meeting his eyes with her own. She could see the insanity and uncertainty behind them; to consume, or to help? Jameson was clearly still considering his options.
 
“Careful with those eyes, dear. They speak louder than words here. And his ears are fine tuned for such things.” Jem warned subtly. Samantha looked to him, noting the sincerity behind her remark.
 
Samantha squeezed her eyes shut, struggling to recompose herself, then apologized to Jameson. “You’re right. I did let them down. And I am doing what I can to repent.” Uneasy, she turned to address Jem once more. “I am looking for answers about this.” Samantha held the kaleidoscope.
 
“Huh.” Jameson looked to Jem to see how he wanted to proceed. Her office, his rules.
 
“This thing…this colorful tube. What is it?” Jem took it from Sam’s palm and began turning it around in her hands.
 
“It came with my brother from… Somewhere. He came back aged and scarred. I’m not really sure where, only that it involved a conflict with a Demon and going back in time, ‘supposedly’.”
 
“Oh… Aged? Aged you say.” Jem looked at Jameson with a tilt to her head. “You have brought me something interesting. Your earlier transgression is forgiven. What happens when you look into it, exactly?”
 
“John has looked into it, and so has my other brother. They get visions of a man. The same one that has addressed me in dreams.”
 
“I hear your words but your heart says more than visions. Be frank with me dear. I don’t like duplicity.”
 
Samantha tilted her head at the word duplicity. “I would not look into it. It drove John to obsession, others to brief insanity, and Reece… Just hasn’t been the same since. I can’t explain it other than to offer you to see what I saw. Yesterday, you said memories are fluid, right?”
 
“HA, madness,” Jameson interjected. “That’s my awakening.” He plucked the kaleidoscope from Jem’s hands and looked at it for a moment.
 
“Wai-!” Samantha blurted out, not keen on the device being looked through, supernatural being or otherwise.
 
“World tossed girl. I know what it’s like to lose everyone precious as fate seems set against you. To be so certain of the right thing, and to suffer so many horrors.” He looked up from the small curio to Samantha. “I can feel your burning desire to free your brothers from a nightmare entity. Who is this jailor?”
 
Jem stepped away, letting the two speak as she began to peruse books among his stall. She spoke softly to himself as she did so. “Dreams. Gate? Key? hmmm….Arcadia? No… It’s more like….the Hedge. But not… hmmmm.”
 
“I am uncertain,” Samantha replied, “other than that he offers me a similar pair of shackles.”
 
“The gift of every person of power is a gilded cage,” Jameson retorted.
 
“Jameson. Give it a look through.” Jem interjected from afar, the hair on Sam’s neck standing on end in response.
 
“The only key is war.” The tall man’s dreadful remark punctuated Jem’s request, giving Samantha an intense stare before drawing the spyglass up to a green eye. The only thing more dreadful was the lingering moment after.
 
Jem’s neck turned at an unnatural angel as her body remained facing his books. He observed fixedly with thirst as Jameson took in what was beyond the awful spyglass. A low snarl formed on Jameson’s mouth as fire began to lick his lips. Samantha stepped back, giving the man space and looking to Jem for reassurance. All that was returned was a smile.
 
“I’m sorry,” Jameson warned as the world began to distort, the kaleidoscope still pressed to his eye. Jem quickly snatched up a large mirror as whispers like gossamer webs filled the stall, whispers written in her secrets and guilt: The loss of a brother; The death on an innocent; Her complicity in a corrupt system. Samantha could see the people around them, but it felt like they were distant. Like she was all alone in a crowd. No one cared about her.
 
Reams of paper exploded outward from the stall, shaping an endless maze of which there was no escape. Everywhere she looked, the angles were all wrong.
 
“This part is tricky dear. Brace yourself,” Jem quipped.
 
Jameson bellowed and bared himself before the others, his draconian form shedding the skin that contained his calamitous true form. A regal crown of horns adorned his head, and his scales shined with crimson stains.
 
Beyond the stall stood a pharaoh, wreathed in shadow and attended by his spiders. Chained to him were two men, their forms a twisted mockery of hounds, as if their very humanity was being leached away. They were her brothers.
 
“Ah. So yes. Not the Hedge.” Jem said, wincing.
 
Jem’s voice drew Samantha briefly from her shock, as she moved closer to Jem and Jameson, not peeling her eyes once from the figure before them. Or rather, what was beyond it. A cosmos undreamed. The truths of the universe laid bare. Too many truths, in fact. The planets sung the music of the spheres! Before her was the orchestra of existence, and she but an infinitely small mote! Samantha lurched forward, a hand outstretched towards her brothers, as the music overwhelmed her. The truth began stripping away her selfhood, her soul sloughing off slowly with her skin.
 
“Ummmm, you should stay here dear! That is not a thing you need to be near,” Jem called out.
 
A pillar of flame erupted from Jameson, blasting the pharaoh. His shawl of shadow remained in place, but the being was taken aback, perhaps by the boldness of the assault. The spiders surrounding him scattered, if only to menace the approaching human.
 
Samantha turned hopelessly to Jem. “Is there something I can give you, that I may repel these spiders? Anything?” She wanted answers, but what could she do?
 
“This is not the time for deals, child! Go to them if you must. We will sort it when we’re done.”
 
She swallowed a pained groan, returning her gaze to her siblings. John was broken, yet defiant still. His eyes met hers, and she could tell that he didn’t have much time before he became a reflection of the other chained man. Richard. Richard! She remembered, yet what she recalled was not the man before her now, a thrall broken by lies that were truths. Lies that clawed at her eyes as she turned her gaze to the terrible pharaoh that held their chains, locked in combat with a fierce dragon.
 
Whoever this pharaoh was, he was once human, but no more. His mortal coil shed for higher truths. Truths he formed himself, lies made flesh, lies of the nature of the world. His truth was an infection, desperate to embrace the waking world. Love is servitude. Joy is pain. Obedience is life. They crawled, clamouring for purchase upon Samantha’s forming soul. And they found it, gnawing lecherously and filling the cracks left by divine fire.
 
John grabbed hold of Samantha. A familiar strength. He was always so strong. In another life, he could have even held open the maw of a ravenous god. Holding her, he tries to say something, yet it was so hard to hear. The spiders swarmed them, seeking to tear the two from each other.
 
Sam embraced him, hoping to hear the words clearly, seeking shelter from the screaming song that flayed her flesh and soul. If anything, she could embrace her brother once more. She remembered this embrace. Comfort from a time when she saw what she perceived as the truth of her existence.
 
John was the rebel. The red-headed step-child. Even when Samantha worked for Customs and Border Patrol, he kept her grounded. She saw her work as a means of service to her country and loved ones, but that service meant nothing without compassion and understanding. And when those things went away, she left. Service could be love, but there are more facets to it than that.
 
Rebellion is love.
 
Resistance is love.
 
“I’ve seen you struggle, John. We’re coming for you both.”
 
John smiled at Samantha with that dopey, huge grin of his. “I love you. You’re the best of us.” His face became serious. “He’s trying to come through. There are weak spots everywhere. In the lands of dreams and souls he’s waiting. That’s where his kingdom is. I saw it when I died. I saw the weak spots. Never forget that I love you.”
 
“We love you too.”
 
The spiders wrapped Samantha in their webs, wrapping her thoughts in soothing noises as they tried to crawl inside.
 
“SAMANTHA! " Jem’s voice was loud but so very distant. “Look into the mirror! LOOK IN THE MIRROR! HERE!”
 
Samantha struggled to look away, glancing past John to Richard, then back to him once more. He looked so tired. How could he smile? She cast a glance over her shoulder towards Jem, and then the mirror.
 
She stared, confused at the reflection that was hers, but not her own. A lie that spoke to her in ways that resound with truth. She felt the spiders take hold as they crawled up her back. The reflection smiled, and in that instant, the mirror cracked and shattered, tumbling away into nothingness. With it, the lies that took purchase upon her soul were gone, and only John’s words stuck with her.
 
The dragon yelled an unknowable word, drawing the nightmare to an end. She was in Jem’s stall. Jameson was a man. And Jem was eyeing the plethora of mirrors in her stall. Samantha followed his gaze to a mirror, containing a distinct lack of her own reflection.
 
The clack of a small brass object hitting the counter drew Sam’s attention. Despite the perceived eternity that Jameson and the accursed figure were locked in combat, he bore only a few small bruises here and there. He broke the silence that filled the stall. “Did you get the answers you needed for your quest?”
 
She eyed the small bruises, concerned, but was still registering what happened. The world was spinning. “I don’t know. But I know more now than I did before.”
 
Well," Jem said wiping his hands together, cleansing herself of the situation. “That was certainly worth the interruption. So we helped you find your brothers and saved your soul from corruption and torment. So in return, you’ll do the same. There are women that the Stripling Prince has done something similar to. Meredith knows of this. She’s found one. You need to help her find the others. Do this, and we’ll call it even.” He held out his hand to shake.
 
Jameson placed a hand on her shoulder. “A person can’t accomplish things in this world without friends. Find someone who is looking for ways to sense these weak points, and someone else who can get answers from your brother’s mind.” He paused for a second, thinking. “If you need my help further, I’m available to help those who are dominated by others. Join my cult and gain of my powers. The price might be too high, though, as it is paid in your blood and dreams.”
 
Samantha shakily took Jem’s hand into her own, sealing the deal. “Sure. Anything…” She turned to Jameson, uncertain. “Why did you attack it? Do you know what he is?”
 
“Because the battle was joined. This kaleidoscope is a weapon as well as a key. As soon as I looked through, he assaulted me. I knew then that I needed my full strength. As to what it is, I’m unsure. It felt like one of the demon hosts, but its powers were like that of a mage, though darker…more foul. I felt its lineage and it was wrong.”
 
“I cannot run from the threat of evil,” he continued, “or those who would dare challenge me. All must bow down before the true red tyrant of this world, or be incinerated.”
 
“My brother here is the hand and the sword and the shield of the Dragon,” Jem clarified. “I’m merely the Voice. I think we’re both the Will… No. No, that’s our sister.” They both nod.
 
Jameson extended his other hand to Jem, linking everyone. “Jem and our sister are my dearest. Without them, I would be lost, and could not have returned to life so many times ago.” Jem smiled a vulnerable smile. She stepped closer to embrace him.
 
“Yeah… Family is nice, when you’re there for them, and they for you.” There was an absence of uncertainty in Sam’s voice when she finally found it. She contemplated joining the embrace, her hand still occupied with the firm handshake that sealed her pact with Jem, however the floor looked cool and inviting for her flesh that seared once more.
 
She slumped down against the stall. She felt tired, but complete. Renewed. Resolute. She got her answers, so for now, she could sleep.